"15a The Prince and Betty" - читать интересную книгу автора (Unknown)

He had not been working long, when Pugsy Maloney, the office boy, entered.

“Say!” said Pugsy.

“Say on, Comrade Maloney.”

“Dere’s a loidy out dere wit a letter for Mr. Renshaw.”

“Have you acquainted her with the fact that Mr. Renshaw has passed to other climes?”

“Huh?”

“Have you, in the course of your conversation with this lady, mentioned that Mr. Renshaw has beaten it?”

“Sure, I did. And she says can she see you?”

Smith removed his feet from the table.

“Certainly,” he said. “Who am I that I should deny people these little treats? Ask her to come in, Comrade Maloney.”

CHAPTER XIII

BETTY MAKES A FRIEND

Betty had appealed to Master Maloney’s esthetic sense of beauty directly she appeared before him. It was with regret, therefore, rather than with the usual calm triumph of the office boy, that he informed her that the editor was not in. Also, seeing that she was evidently perturbed by the information, he had gone out of his way to suggest that she lay her business, whatever it might be, before Mr. Renshaw’s temporary successor.

Smith received her with Old-World courtesy.

“Will you sit down?” he said. “Not to wait for Comrade Renshaw, of course. He will not be back for another three months. Perhaps I can help you. I am acting editor. The work is not light,” he added gratuitously. “Sometimes the cry goes round New York, ‘Can Smith get through it all? Will his strength support his unquenchable spirit?’ But I stagger on. I do not repine. What was it that you wished to see Comrade Renshaw about?”

He swung his monocle lightly by its cord. For the first time since she had entered the office Betty was rather glad that Mr. Renshaw was away. Conscious of her defects as a stenographer she had been looking forward somewhat apprehensively to the interview with her prospective employer. But this long, solemn youth put her at her ease. His manner suggested in some indefinable way that the whole thing was a sort of round game.

“I came about the typewriting,” she said.

Smith looked at her with interest.

“Are you the nominee?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Do you come from Mrs. Oakley?”

“Yes.”

“Then all is well. The decks have been cleared against your coming. Consider yourself engaged as our official typist. By the way, can you type?”

Betty laughed. This was certainly not the awkward interview she had been picturing in her mind.

“Yes,” she said, “but I’m afraid I’m not very good at it.”

“Never mind,” said Smith. “I’m not very good at editing. Yet here I am. I foresee that we shall make an ideal team. Together, we will toil early and late till we whoop up this domestic journal into a shining model of what a domestic journal should be. What that is, at present, I do not exactly know. Excursion trains will be run from the Middle West to see this domestic journal. Visitors from Oshkosh will do it before going on to Grant’s tomb. What exactly is your name?”

Betty hesitated. Yes, perhaps it would be better. “Brown,” she said.

“Mine is Smith. The smiling child in the outer office is Pugsy Maloney, one of our most prominent citizens. Homely in appearance, perhaps, but one of us. You will get to like Comrade Maloney. And now, to touch on a painful subject—work. Would you care to start in now, or have you any other engagements? Perhaps you wish to see the sights of this beautiful little city before beginning? You would prefer to start in now? Excellent. You could not have come at a more suitable time, for I was on the very point of sallying out to purchase about twenty-five cents’ worth of lunch. We editors, Comrade Brown, find that our tissues need constant restoration, such is the strenuous nature of our duties. You will find one or two letters on that table. Good-by, then, for the present.”

He picked up his hat, smoothed it carefully and with a courtly inclination of his head, left the room.

Betty sat down, and began to think. So she was really earning her own living! It was a stimulating thought. She felt a little bewildered. She had imagined something so different. Mrs. Oakley had certainly said that Peaceful Moments was a small paper, but despite that, her imagination had conjured up visions of bustle and activity, and a peremptory, overdriven editor, snapping out words of command. Smith, with his careful speech and general air of calm detachment from the noisy side of life, created an atmosphere of restfulness. If this was a sample of life in the office, she thought, the paper had been well named. She felt soothed and almost happy.

Interesting and exciting things, New York things, began to happen at once. To her, meditating, there entered Pugsy Maloney, the guardian of the gate of this shrine of Peace, a nonchalant youth of about fifteen, with a freckled, mask-like face, the expression of which never varied, bearing in his arms a cat. The cat was struggling violently, but he appeared quite unconscious of it. Its existence did not seem to occur to him.

“Say!” said Pugsy.

Betty was fond of cats.

“Oh, don’t hurt her!” she cried anxiously.

Master Maloney eyed the cat as if he were seeing it for the first time.

“I wasn’t hoitin’ her,” he said, without emotion. “Dere was two fresh kids in the street sickin’ a dawg on to her. And I comes up and says, ‘G’wan! What do youse t’ink youse doin’, fussin’ de poor dumb animal?’ An’ one of de guys, he says, ‘G’wan! Who do youse t’ink youse is?’ An’ I says, ‘I’m de guy what’s goin’ to swat youse on de coco, smarty, if youse don’t quit fussin’ de poor dumb animal.’ So wit’ dat he makes a break at swattin’ me one, but I swats him one, an’ I swats de odder feller one, an’ den I swats dem bote some more, an’ I gits de kitty, an’ I brings her in here, cos I t’inks maybe youse’ll look after her. I can’t be boddered myself. Cats is foolishness.”

And, having finished this Homeric narrative, Master Maloney fixed an expressionless eye on the ceiling, and was silent.

“How splendid of you, Pugsy!” cried Betty. “She might have been killed, poor thing.”

“She had it pretty fierce,” admitted Master Maloney, gazing dispassionately at the rescued animal, which had escaped from his clutch and taken up a strong position on an upper shelf of the bookcase.

“Will you go out and get her some milk, Pugsy? She’s probably starving. Here’s a quarter. Will you keep the change?”

“Sure thing,” assented Master Maloney.

He strolled slowly out, while Betty, mounting a chair, proceeded to chirrup and snap her fingers in the effort to establish the foundations of an entente cordiale with the cat.

By the time Pugsy returned, carrying a five-cent bottle of milk, the animal had vacated the shelf, and was sitting on the table, polishing her face. The milk having been poured into the lid of a tobacco tin, in lieu of a saucer, she suspended her operations and adjourned for refreshments, Pugsy, having no immediate duties on hand, concentrated himself on the cat.

“Say!” he said.

“Well?”

“Dat kitty. Pipe de leather collar she’s wearin’.”

Betty had noticed earlier in the proceedings that a narrow leather collar encircled the animal’s neck.

“Guess I know where dat kitty belongs. Dey all has dose collars. I guess she’s one of Bat Jarvis’s kitties. He’s got twenty-t’ree of dem, and dey all has dose collars.”

“Bat Jarvis?”

“Sure.”

“Who is he?”

Pugsy looked at her incredulously.

“Say! Ain’t youse never heard of Bat Jarvis? He’s—he’s Bat Jarvis.”

“Do you know him?”

“Sure, I knows him.”

“Does he live near here?”

“Sure, he lives near here.”

“Then I think the best thing for you to do is to run round and tell him that I am taking care of his cat, and that he had better come and fetch it. I must be getting on with my work, or I shall never finish it.”

She settled down to type the letters Smith had indicated. She attacked her task cautiously. She was one of those typists who are at their best when they do not have to hurry.

She was putting the finishing touches to the last of the batch, when there was a shuffling of feet in the outer room, followed by a knock on the door. The next moment there entered a short, burly young man, around whom there hung, like an aroma, an indescribable air of toughness, partly due, perhaps, to the fact that he wore his hair in a well-oiled fringe almost down to his eyebrows, thus presenting the appearance of having no forehead at all. His eyes were small and set close together. His mouth was wide, his jaw prominent. Not, in short, the sort of man you would have picked out on sight as a model citizen. He blinked furtively, as his eyes met Betty’s, and looked round the room. His face lighted up as he saw the cat.

“Say!” he said, stepping forward, and touching the cat’s collar. “Ma’am, mine!”

“Are you Mr. Jarvis?” asked Betty.

The visitor nodded, not without a touch of complacency, as of a monarch abandoning his incognito.

For Mr. Jarvis was a celebrity.

By profession he was a dealer in animals, birds, and snakes. He had a fancier’s shop on Groome Street, in the heart of the Bowery. This was on the ground floor. His living abode was in the upper story of that house, and it was there that he kept the twenty-three cats whose necks were adorned with leather collars.

But it was not the fact that he possessed twenty-three cats with leather collars that had made Mr. Jarvis a celebrity. A man may win a local reputation, if only for eccentricity, by such means. Mr. Jarvis’ reputation was far from being purely local. Broadway knew him, and the Tenderloin. Tammany Hall knew him. Long Island City knew him. For Bat Jarvis was the leader of the famous Groome Street Gang, the largest and most influential of the four big gangs of the East Side.

To Betty, so little does the world often know of its greatest men, he was merely a decidedly repellent-looking young man in unbecoming clothes. But his evident affection for the cat gave her a feeling of fellowship toward him. She beamed upon him, and Mr. Jarvis, who was wont to face the glare of rivals without flinching, avoided her eye and shuffled with embarrassment.

“I’m so glad she’s safe!” said Betty. “There were two boys teasing her in the street. I’ve been giving her some milk.”

Mr. Jarvis nodded, with his eyes on the floor.

There was a pause. Then he looked up, and, fixing his gaze some three feet above her head, spoke.

“Say!” he said, and paused again. Betty waited expectantly.

He relaxed into silence again, apparently thinking.

“Say!” he said. “Ma’am, obliged. Fond of de kit. I am.”

“She’s a dear,” said Betty, tickling the cat under the ear.

“Ma’am,” went on Mr. Jarvis, pursuing his theme, “obliged. Sha’n’t fergit it. Any time you’re in bad, glad to be of service. Bat Jarvis. Groome Street. Anybody’ll show youse where I live.”

He paused, and shuffled his feet; then, tucking the cat more firmly under his arm, left the room. Betty heard him shuffling downstairs.

He had hardly gone, when the door opened again, and Smith came in.

“So you have had company while I was away?” he said. “Who was the grandee with the cat? An old childhood’s friend? Was he trying to sell the animal to us?”

“That was Mr. Bat Jarvis,” said Betty.

Smith looked interested.

“Bat! What was he doing here?”

Betty related the story of the cat. Smith nodded thoughtfully.

“Well,” he said, “I don’t know that Comrade Jarvis is precisely the sort of friend I would go out of my way to select. Still, you never know what might happen. He might come in useful. And now, let us concentrate ourselves tensely on this very entertaining little journal of ours, and see if we cannot stagger humanity with it.”

CHAPTER XIV

A CHANGE OF POLICY

The feeling of tranquillity which had come to Betty on her first acquaintance with Peaceful Moments seemed to deepen as the days went by, and with each day she found the sharp pain at her heart less vehement. It was still there, but it was dulled. The novelty of her life and surroundings kept it in check. New York is an egotist. It will suffer no divided attention. “Look at me!” says the voice of the city imperiously, and its children obey. It snatches their thoughts from their inner griefs, and concentrates them on the pageant that rolls unceasingly from one end of the island to the other. One may despair in New York, but it is difficult to brood on the past; for New York is the City of the Present, the City of Things that are Going On.

To Betty everything was new and strange. Her previous acquaintance with the metropolis had not been extensive. Mr. Scobell’s home—or, rather, the house which he owned in America—was on the outskirts of Philadelphia, and it was there that she had lived when she was not paying visits. Occasionally, during horse-show week, or at some other time of festivity, she had spent a few days with friends who lived in Madison or upper Fifth Avenue, but beyond that, New York was a closed book to her.

It would have been a miracle in the circumstances, if John and Mervo and the whole of the events since the arrival of the great cable had not to some extent become a little dream-like. When she was alone at night, and had leisure to think, the dream became a reality once more; but in her hours of work, or what passed for work in the office of Peaceful Moments, and in the hours she spent walking about the streets and observing the ways of this new world of hers, it faded. Everything was so bright and busy! Every moment had its fresh interest.

And, above all, there was the sense of adventure. She was twenty-four; she had health and an imagination; and almost unconsciously she was stimulated by the thrill of being for the first time in her life genuinely at large. The child’s love of hiding dies hard in us. To Betty, to walk abroad in New York in the midst of hurrying crowds, just Betty Brown—one of four million and no longer the beautiful Miss Silver of the society column, was to taste the romance of disguise, or invisibility.

During office hours she came near to complete contentment. To an expert stenographer the amount of work to be done would have seemed ridiculously small, but Betty, who liked plenty of time for a task, generally managed to make it last comfortably through the day.

This was partly owing to the fact that her editor, when not actually at work himself, was accustomed to engage her in conversation, and to keep her so engaged until the entrance of Pugsy Maloney heralded the arrival of some caller.

Betty liked Smith. His odd ways, his conversation, and his extreme solicitude for his clothes amused her. She found his outlook on life refreshing. Smith was an optimist. Whatever cataclysm might occur, he never doubted for a moment that he would be comfortably on the summit of the debris when all was over. He amazed Betty with his stories of his reportorial adventures. He told them for the most part as humorous stories at his own expense, but the fact remained that in a considerable proportion of them he had only escaped a sudden and violent death by adroitness or pure good luck. His conversation opened up a new world to Betty. She began to see that in America, and especially in New York, anything may happen to anybody. She looked on Smith with new eyes.

“But surely all this,” she said one morning, after he had come to the end of the story of a highly delicate piece of interviewing work in connection with some Cumberland Mountains feudists, “surely all this—” She looked round the room.

“Domesticity?” suggested Smith.

“Yes,” said Betty. “Surely it all seems rather tame to you?”

Smith sighed.

“Comrade Brown,” he said, “you have touched the spot with an unerring finger.”

Since Mr. Renshaw’s departure, the flatness of life had come home to Smith with renewed emphasis. Before, there had always been the quiet entertainment of watching the editor at work, but now he was feeling restless. Like John at Mervo, he was practically nothing but an ornament. Peaceful Moments, like Mervo, had been set rolling and had continued to roll on almost automatically. The staff of regular contributors sent in their various pages. There was nothing for the man in charge to do. Mr. Renshaw had been one of those men who have a genius for being as busy over nothing as if it were some colossal work, but Smith had not that gift. He liked something that he could grip and that gripped him. He was becoming desperately bored. He felt like a marooned sailor on a barren rock of domesticity.

A visitor who called at the office at this time did nothing to remove this sensation of being outside everything that made life worth living. Betty, returning to the office one afternoon, found Smith in the doorway, just parting from a thickset young man. There was a rather gloomy expression on the thickset young man’s face.

Smith, too, she noted, when they were back in the inner office, seemed to have something on his mind. He was strangely silent.

“Comrade Brown,” he said at last, “I wish this little journal of ours had a sporting page.”

Betty laughed.

“Less ribaldry,” protested Smith pained. “This is a sad affair. You saw the man I was talking to? That was Kid Brady. I used to know him when I was out West. He wants to fight anyone in the country at a hundred and thirty-three pounds. We all have our hobbies. That is Comrade Brady’s.”

“Is he a boxer?”

“He would like to be. Out West, nobody could touch him. He’s in the championship class. But he has been pottering about New York for a month without being able to get a fight. If we had a sporting page on Peaceful Moments we could do him some good, but I don’t see how we can write him up,” said Smith, picking up a copy of the paper, and regarding it gloomily, “in ‘Moments in the Nursery’ or ‘Moments with Budding Girlhood.’”

He put up his eyeglass, and stared at the offending journal with the air of a vegetarian who has found a caterpillar in his salad. Incredulity, dismay, and disgust fought for precedence in his expression.

“B. Henderson Asher,” he said severely, “ought to be in some sort of a home. Cain killed Abel for telling him that story.”

He turned to another page, and scrutinized it with deepening gloom.

“Is Luella Granville Waterman by any chance a friend of yours, Comrade Brown? No? I am glad. For it seems to me that for sheer, concentrated piffle, she is in a class by herself.”

He read on for a few moments in silence, then looked up and fixed Betty with his monocle. There was righteous wrath in his eyes.

“And people,” he said, “are paying money for this! Money! Even now they are sitting down and writing checks for a year’s subscription. It isn’t right! It’s a skin game. I am assisting in a carefully planned skin game!”

“But perhaps they like it,” suggested Betty.

Smith shook his head.

“It is kind of you to try and soothe my conscience, but it is useless. I see my position too clearly. Think of it, Comrade Brown! Thousands of poor, doddering, half-witted creatures in Brooklyn and Flatbush, who ought not really to have control of their own money at all, are getting buncoed out of whatever it is per annum in exchange for—how shall I put it in a forcible yet refined and gentlemanly manner?—for cat’s meat of this description. Why, selling gold bricks is honest compared with it. And I am temporarily responsible for the black business!”

He extended a lean hand with melodramatic suddenness toward Betty. The unexpectedness of the movement caused her to start back in her chair with a little exclamation of surprise. Smith nodded with a kind of mournful satisfaction.

“Exactly!” he said. “As I expected! You shrink from me. You avoid my polluted hand. How could it be otherwise? A conscientious green-goods man would do the same.” He rose from his seat. “Your attitude,” he said, “confirms me in a decision that has been in my mind for some days. I will no longer calmly accept this terrible position. I will try to make amends. While I am in charge, I will give our public something worth reading. All these Watermans and Ashers and Parslows must go!”

“Go!”

“Go!” repeated Smith firmly. “I have been thinking it over for days. You cannot look me in the face, Comrade Brown, and say that there is a single feature which would not be better away. I mean in the paper, not in my face. Every one of these punk pages must disappear. Letters must be despatched at once, informing Julia Burdett Parslow and the others, and in particular B. Henderson Asher, who, on brief acquaintance, strikes me as an ideal candidate for a lethal chamber—that, unless they cease their contributions instantly, we shall call up the police reserves. Then we can begin to move.”

Betty, like most of his acquaintances, seldom knew whether Smith was talking seriously or not. She decided to assume, till he should dismiss the idea, that he meant what he said.

“But you can’t!” she exclaimed.

“With your kind cooperation, nothing easier. You supply the mechanical work. I will compose the letters. First, B. Henderson Asher. ‘Dear Sir’—”

“But—” she fell back on her original remark—”but you can’t. What will Mr. Renshaw say when he comes back?”

“Sufficient unto the day. I have a suspicion that he will be the first to approve. His vacation will have made him see things differently—purified him, as it were. His conscience will be alive once more.”

“But—”

“Why should we worry ourselves because the end of this venture is wrapped in obscurity? Why, Columbus didn’t know where he was going to when he set out. All he knew was some highly interesting fact about an egg. What that was, I do not at the moment recall, but I understand it acted on Columbus like a tonic. We are the Columbuses of the journalistic world. Full steam ahead, and see what happens. If Comrade Renshaw is not pleased, why, I shall have been a martyr to a good cause. It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done, so to speak. Why should I allow possible inconvenience to myself to stand in the way of the happiness which we propose to inject into those Brooklyn and Flatbush homes? Are you ready then, once more? ‘Dear Sir—’”

Betty gave in.

When the letters were finished, she made one more objection.

“They are certain to call here and make a fuss,” she said, “Mr. Asher and the rest.”

“You think they will not bear the blow with manly fortitude?”

“I certainly do. And I think it’s hard on them, too. Suppose they depend for a living on what they make from Peaceful Moments?”

“They don’t,” said Smith reassuringly. “I’ve looked into that. Have no pity for them. They are amateurs—degraded creatures of substance who take the cocktails out of the mouths of deserving professionals. B. Henderson Asher, for instance, is largely interested in gents’ haberdashery. And so with the others. We touch their pride, perhaps, but not their purses.”

Betty’s soft heart was distinctly relieved by the information.

“I see,” she said. “But suppose they do call, what will you do? It will be very unpleasant.”

Smith pondered.

“True,” he said. “True. I think you are right there. My nervous system is so delicately attuned that anything in the shape of a brawl would reduce it to a frazzle. I think that, for this occasion only, we will promote Comrade Maloney to the post of editor. He is a stern, hard, rugged man who does not care how unpopular he is. Yes, I think that would be best.”

He signed the letters with a firm hand, “per pro P. Maloney, editor.”

Then he lit a cigarette, and leaned back in his chair.

“An excellent morning’s work,” he said. “Already I begin to feel the dawnings of a new self-respect.”

Betty, thinking the thing over, a little dazed by the rapidity of Smith’s method of action, had found a fresh flaw in the scheme.

“If you send Mr. Asher and the others away, how are you going to bring the paper out at all? You can’t write it all yourself.”

Smith looked at her with benevolent admiration.

“She thinks of everything,” he murmured. “That busy brain is never still. No, Comrade Brown, I do not propose to write the whole paper myself. I do not shirk work when it gets me in a corner and I can’t side-step, but there are limits. I propose to apply to a few of my late companions of Park Row, bright boys who will be delighted to come across with red-hot stuff for a moderate fee.”

“And the proprietor of the paper? Won’t he make any objection?”

Smith shook his head with a touch of reproof.

“You seem determined to try to look on the dark side. Do you insinuate that we are not acting in the proprietor’s best interests? When he gets his check for the receipts, after I have handled the paper awhile, he will go singing about the streets. His beaming smile will be a byword. Visitors will be shown it as one of the sights. His only doubt will be whether to send his money to the bank or keep it in tubs and roll in it. And anyway,” he added, “he’s in Europe somewhere, and never sees the paper, sensible man.”

He scratched a speck of dust off his coat-sleeve with his finger nail.

“This is a big thing,” he resumed. “Wait till you see the first number of the new series. My idea is that Peaceful Moments shall become a pretty warm proposition. Its tone shall be such that the public will wonder why we do not print it on asbestos. We shall comment on all the live events of the week—murders, Wall Street scandals, glove fights, and the like, in a manner which will make our readers’ spines thrill. Above all, we shall be the guardians of the people’s rights. We shall be a spot light, showing up the dark places and bringing into prominence those who would endeavor in any way to put the people in Dutch. We shall detect the wrongdoer, and hand him such a series of resentful wallops that he will abandon his little games and become a model citizen. In this way we shall produce a bright, readable little sheet which will make our city sit up and take notice. I think so. I think so. And now I must be hustling about and seeing our new contributors. There is no time to waste.”

CHAPTER XV

THE HONEYED WORD

The offices of Peaceful Moments were in a large building in a street off Madison Avenue. They consisted of a sort of outer lair, where Pugsy Maloney spent his time reading tales of life on the prairies and heading off undesirable visitors; a small room, into which desirable but premature visitors were loosed, to wait their turn for admission into the Presence; and a larger room beyond, which was the editorial sanctum.

Smith, returning from luncheon on the day following his announcement of the great change, found both Betty and Pugsy waiting in the outer lair, evidently with news of import.

“Mr. Smith,” began Betty.

“Dey’re in dere,” said Master Maloney with his customary terseness.

“Who, exactly?” asked Smith.

“De whole bunch of dem.”

Smith inspected Pugsy through his eyeglass. “Can you give me any particulars?” he asked patiently. “You are well-meaning, but vague, Comrade Maloney. Who are in there?”

“About ‘steen of dem!” said Pugsy.

“Mr. Asher,” said Betty, “and Mr. Philpotts, and all the rest of them.” She struggled for a moment, but, unable to resist the temptation, added, “I told you so.”

A faint smile appeared upon Smith’s face.

“Dey just butted in,” said Master Maloney, resuming his narrative. “I was sittin’ here, readin’ me book, when de foist of de guys blows in. ‘Boy,’ says he, ‘is de editor in?’ ‘Nope,’ I says. ‘I’ll go in and wait,’ says he. ‘Nuttin’ doin’,’ says I. ‘Nix on de goin’-in act.’ I might as well have saved me breat! In he butts. In about t’ree minutes along comes another gazebo. ‘Boy,’ says he, ‘is de editor in?’ ‘Nope,’ I says. ‘I’ll wait,’ says he, lightin’ out for de door, and in he butts. Wit’ dat I sees de proposition’s too fierce for muh. I can’t keep dese big husky guys out if dey bucks center like dat. So when de rest of de bunch comes along, I don’t try to give dem de trun down. I says, ‘Well, gent,’ I says, ‘it’s up to youse. De editor ain’t in, but, if you feels lonesome, push t’roo. Dere’s plenty dere to keep youse company. I can’t be boddered!’”

“And what more could you have said?” agreed Smith approvingly. “Tell me, did these gentlemen appear to be gay and light-hearted, or did they seem to be looking for someone with a hatchet?”

“Dey was hoppin’ mad, de whole bunch of dem.”

“Dreadfully,” attested Betty.

“As I suspected,” said Smith, “but we must not repine. These trifling contretemps are the penalties we pay for our high journalistic aims. I fancy that with the aid of the diplomatic smile and the honeyed word I may manage to win out. Will you come and give me your moral support, Comrade Brown?”

He opened the door of the inner room for Betty, and followed her in.

Master Maloney’s statement that “about ‘steen” visitors had arrived proved to be a little exaggerated. There were five men in the room.

As Smith entered, every eye was turned upon him. To an outside spectator he would have seemed rather like a very well-dressed Daniel introduced into a den of singularly irritable lions. Five pairs of eyes were smoldering with a long-nursed resentment. Five brows were corrugated with wrathful lines. Such, however, was the simple majesty of Smith’s demeanor that for a moment there was dead silence. Not a word was spoken as he paced, wrapped in thought, to the editorial chair. Stillness brooded over the room as he carefully dusted that piece of furniture, and, having done so to his satisfaction, hitched up the knees of his trousers and sank gracefully into a sitting position.

This accomplished, he looked up and started. He gazed round the room.

“Ha! I am observed!” he murmured.

The words broke the spell. Instantly the five visitors burst simultaneously into speech.

“Are you the acting editor of this paper?”

“I wish to have a word with you, sir.”

“Mr. Maloney, I presume?”

“Pardon me!”

“I should like a few moments’ conversation.”

The start was good and even, but the gentleman who said “Pardon me!” necessarily finished first, with the rest nowhere.

Smith turned to him, bowed, and fixed him with a benevolent gaze through his eyeglass.

“Are you Mr. Maloney, may I ask?” enquired the favored one.

The others paused for the reply. Smith shook his head. “My name is Smith.”

“Where is Mr. Maloney?”

Smith looked across at Betty, who had seated herself in her place by the typewriter.

“Where did you tell me Mr. Maloney had gone to, Miss Brown? Ah, well, never mind. Is there anything I can do for you, gentlemen? I am on the editorial staff of this paper.”

“Then, maybe,” said a small, round gentleman who, so far, had done only chorus work, “you can tell me what all this means? My name is Waterman, sir. I am here on behalf of my wife, whose name you doubtless know.”

“Correct me if I am wrong,” said Smith, “but I should say it, also, was Waterman.”

“Luella Granville Waterman, sir!” said the little man proudly. “My wife,” he went on, “has received this extraordinary communication from a man signing himself P. Maloney. We are both at a loss to make head or tail of it.”

“It seems reasonably clear to me,” said Smith, reading the letter.

“It’s an outrage. My wife has been a contributor to this journal since its foundation. We are both intimate friends of Mr. Renshaw, to whom my wife’s work has always given complete satisfaction. And now, without the slightest warning, comes this peremptory dismissal from P. Maloney. Who is P. Maloney? Where is Mr. Renshaw?”

The chorus burst forth. It seemed that that was what they all wanted to know. Who was P. Maloney? Where was Mr. Renshaw?

“I am the Reverend Edwin T. Philpott, sir,” said a cadaverous-looking man with light blue eyes and a melancholy face. “I have contributed ‘Moments of Meditation’ to this journal for some considerable time.”

Smith nodded.

“I know, yours has always seemed to me work which the world will not willingly let die.”

The Reverend Edwin’s frosty face thawed into a bleak smile.

“And yet,” continued Smith, “I gather that P. Maloney, on the other hand, actually wishes to hurry on its decease. Strange!”

A man in a serge suit, who had been lurking behind Betty, bobbed into the open.

“Where’s this fellow Maloney? P. Maloney. That’s the man we want to see. I’ve been working for this paper without a break, except when I had the grip, for four years, and now up comes this Maloney fellow, if you please, and tells me in so many words that the paper’s got no use for me.”

“These are life’s tragedies,” sighed Smith.

“What does he mean by it? That’s what I want to know. And that’s what these gentlemen want to know. See here—”

“I am addressing—” said Smith.

“Asher’s my name. B. Henderson Asher. I write ‘Moments of Mirth.’”

A look almost of excitement came into Smith’s face, such a look as a visitor to a foreign land might wear when confronted with some great national monument. He stood up and shook Mr. Asher reverently by the hand.

“Gentlemen,” he said, reseating himself, “this is a painful case. The circumstances, as you will admit when you have heard all, are peculiar. You have asked me where Mr. Renshaw is. I don’t know.”

“You don’t know!” exclaimed Mr. Asher.

“Nobody knows. With luck you may find a black cat in a coal cellar on a moonless night, but not Mr. Renshaw. Shortly after I joined this journal, he started out on a vacation, by his doctor’s orders, and left no address. No letters were to be forwarded. He was to enjoy complete rest. Who can say where he is now? Possibly racing down some rugged slope in the Rockies with two grizzlies and a wildcat in earnest pursuit. Possibly in the midst of Florida Everglades, making a noise like a piece of meat in order to snare alligators. Who can tell?”

Silent consternation prevailed among his audience.

“Then, do you mean to say,” demanded Mr. Asher, “that this fellow Maloney’s the boss here, and that what he says goes?”

Smith bowed.

“Exactly. A man of intensely masterful character, he will brook no opposition. I am powerless to sway him. Suggestions from myself as to the conduct of the paper would infuriate him. He believes that radical changes are necessary in the policy of Peaceful Moments, and he will carry them through if it snows. Doubtless he would gladly consider your work if it fitted in with his ideas. A rapid-fire impression of a glove fight, a spine-shaking word picture of a railway smash, or something on those lines, would be welcomed. But—”

“I have never heard of such a thing,” said Mr. Waterman indignantly.

“In this life,” said Smith, shaking his head, “we must be prepared for every emergency. We must distinguish between the unusual and the impossible. It is unusual for the acting editor of a weekly paper to revolutionize its existing policy, and you have rashly ordered your life on the assumption that it is impossible. You are unprepared. The thing comes on you as a surprise. The cry goes round New York, ‘Comrades Asher, Waterman, Philpotts, and others have been taken unawares. They cannot cope with the situation.’”

“But what is to be done?” cried Mr. Asher.

“Nothing, I fear, except to wait. It may be that when Mr. Renshaw, having dodged the bears and eluded the wildcat, returns to his post, he will decide not to continue the paper on the lines at present mapped out. He should be back in about ten weeks.”

“Ten weeks!”

“Till then, the only thing to do is to wait. You may rely on me to keep a watchful eye on your interests. When your thoughts tend to take a gloomy turn say to yourselves, ‘All is well. Smith is keeping a watchful eye on our interests.’”

“All the same, I should like to see this P. Maloney,” said Mr. Asher.

“I shouldn’t,” said Smith. “I speak in your best interests. P. Maloney is a man of the fiercest passions. He cannot brook interference. If you should argue with him, there is no knowing what might not happen. He would be the first to regret any violent action, when once he had cooled off, but— Of course, if you wish it I could arrange a meeting. No? I think you are wise. And now, gentlemen, as I have a good deal of work to get through—

“All very disturbing to the man of culture and refinement,” said Smith, as the door closed behind the last of the malcontents. “But I think that we may now consider the line clear. I see no further obstacle in our path. I fear I have made Comrade Maloney perhaps a shade unpopular with our late contributors, but these things must be. We must clench our teeth and face them manfully. He suffers in an excellent cause.”

CHAPTER XVI

TWO VISITORS TO THE OFFICE

There was once an editor of a paper in the Far West who was sitting at his desk, musing pleasantly on life, when a bullet crashed through the window and imbedded itself in the wall at the back of his head. A happy smile lighted up the editor’s face. “Ah!” he said complacently, “I knew that personal column of ours would make a hit!”

What the bullet was to the Far West editor, the visit of Mr. Martin Parker to the offices of Peaceful Moments was to Smith.

It occurred shortly after the publication of the second number of the new series, and was directly due to Betty’s first and only suggestion for the welfare of the paper.

If the first number of the series had not staggered humanity, it had at least caused a certain amount of comment. The warm weather had begun, and there was nothing much going on in New York. The papers were consequently free to take notice of the change in the policy of Peaceful Moments. Through the agency of Smith’s newspaper friends, it received some very satisfactory free advertisement, and the sudden increase in the sales enabled Smith to bear up with fortitude against the numerous letters of complaint from old subscribers who did not know what was good for them. Visions of a large new public which should replace these Brooklyn and Flatbush ingrates filled his mind.

The sporting section of the paper pleased him most. The personality of Kid Brady bulked large in it. A photograph of the ambitious pugilist, looking moody and important in an attitude of self-defense, filled half a page, and under the photograph was the legend, “Jimmy Garvin must meet this boy.” Jimmy was the present holder of the light-weight title. He had won it a year before, and since then had confined himself to smoking cigars as long as walking sticks and appearing nightly in a vaudeville sketch entitled, “A Fight for Honor.” His reminiscences were being published in a Sunday paper. It was this that gave Smith the idea of publishing Kid Brady’s autobiography in Peaceful Moments, an idea which won the Kid’s whole-hearted gratitude. Like most pugilists he had a passion for bursting into print. Print is the fighter’s accolade. It signifies that he has arrived. He was grateful to Smith, too, for not editing his contributions. Jimmy Garvin groaned under the supervision of a member of the staff of his Sunday paper, who deleted his best passages and altered the rest into Addisonian English. The readers of Peaceful Moments got their Brady raw.

“Comrade Brady,” said Smith meditatively to Betty one morning, “has a singularly pure and pleasing style. It is bound to appeal powerfully to the many-headed. Listen to this. Our hero is fighting one Benson in the latter’s home town, San Francisco, and the audience is rooting hard for the native son. Here is Comrade Brady on the subject: ‘I looked around that house, and I seen I hadn’t a friend in it. And then the gong goes, and I says to myself how I has one friend, my old mother down in Illinois, and I goes in and mixes it, and then I seen Benson losing his goat, so I gives him a half-scissor hook, and in the next round I picks up a sleep-producer from the floor and hands it to him, and he takes the count.’ That is what the public wants. Crisp, lucid, and to the point. If that does not get him a fight with some eminent person, nothing will.”

He leaned back in his chair.

“What we really need now,” he said thoughtfully, “is a good, honest, muck-raking series. That’s the thing to put a paper on the map. The worst of it is that everything seems to have been done. Have you by any chance a second ‘Frenzied Finance’ at the back of your mind? Or proofs that nut sundaes are composed principally of ptomaine and outlying portions of the American workingman? It would be the making of us.”

Now it happened that in the course of her rambles through the city Betty had lost herself one morning in the slums. The experience had impressed itself on her mind with an extraordinary vividness. Her lot had always been cast in pleasant places, and she had never before been brought into close touch with this side of life. The sight of actual raw misery had come home to her with an added force from that circumstance. Wandering on, she had reached a street which eclipsed in cheerlessness even its squalid neighbors. All the smells and noises of the East Side seemed to be penned up here in a sort of canyon. The masses of dirty clothes hanging from the fire-escapes increased the atmosphere of depression. Groups of ragged children covered the roadway.

It was these that had stamped the scene so indelibly on her memory. She loved children, and these seemed so draggled and uncared-for.

Smith’s words gave her an idea.

“Do you know Broster Street, Mr. Smith?” she asked.

“Down on the East Side? Yes, I went there once to get a story, one red-hot night in August, when I was on the News. The Ice Company had been putting up their prices, and trouble was expected down there. I was sent to cover it.”

He did not add that he had spent a week’s salary that night, buying ice and distributing it among the denizens of Broster Street.

“It’s an awful place,” said Betty, her eyes filling with tears. “Those poor children!”

Smith nodded.

“Some of those tenement houses are fierce,” he said thoughtfully. Like Betty, he found himself with a singularly clear recollection of his one visit to Broster Street. “But you can’t do anything.”

“Why not?” cried Betty. “Oh, why not? Surely you couldn’t have a better subject for your series? It’s wicked. People only want to be told about them to make them better. Why can’t we draw attention to them?”

“It’s been done already. Not about Broster Street, but about other tenements. Tenements as a subject are played out. The public isn’t interested in them. Besides, it wouldn’t be any use. You can’t tree the man who is really responsible, unless you can spend thousands scaring up evidence. The land belongs in the first place to some corporation or other. They lease it to a lessee. When there’s a fuss, they say they aren’t responsible, it’s up to the lessee. And he, bright boy, lies so low you can’t find out who it is.”

“But we could try,” urged Betty.

Smith looked at her curiously. The cause was plainly one that lay near to her heart. Her face was flushed and eager. He wavered, and, having wavered, he did what no practical man should do. He allowed sentiment to interfere with business. He knew that a series of articles on Broster Street would probably be so much dead weight on the paper, something to be skipped by the average reader, but he put the thought aside.

“Very well,” he said. “If you care to turn in a few crisp remarks on the subject, I’ll print them.”

Betty’s first instalment was ready on the following morning. It was a curious composition. A critic might have classed it with Kid Brady’s reminiscences, for there was a complete absence of literary style. It was just a wail of pity, and a cry of indignation, straight from the heart and split up into paragraphs.

Smith read it with interest, and sent it off to the printer unaltered.

“Have another ready for next week, Comrade Brown,” he said. “It’s a long shot, but this might turn out to be just what we need.”

And when, two days after the publication of the number containing the article, Mr. Martin Parker called at the office, he felt that the long shot had won out.

He was holding forth on life in general to Betty shortly before the luncheon hour when Pugsy Maloney entered bearing a card.

“Martin Parker?” said Smith, taking it. “I don’t know him. We make new friends daily.”

“He’s a guy wit’ a tall-shaped hat,” volunteered Master Maloney, “an’ he’s wearing a dude suit an’ shiny shoes.”

“Comrade Parker,” said Smith approvingly, “has evidently not been blind to the importance of a visit to Peaceful Moments. He has dressed himself in his best. He has felt, rightly, that this is no occasion for the flannel suit and the old straw hat. I would not have it otherwise. It is the right spirit. Show the guy in. We will give him audience.”

Pugsy withdrew.

Mr. Martin Parker proved to be a man who might have been any age between thirty-five and forty-five. He had a dark face and a black mustache. As Pugsy had stated, in effect, he wore a morning coat, trousers with a crease which brought a smile of kindly approval to Smith’s face, and patent-leather shoes of pronounced shininess.

“I want to see the editor,” he said.

“Will you take a seat?” said Smith.

He pushed a chair toward the visitor, who seated himself with the care inspired by a perfect trouser crease. There was a momentary silence while he selected a spot on the table on which to place his hat.

“I have come about a private matter,” he said, looking meaningly at Betty, who got up and began to move toward the door. Smith nodded to her, and she went out.

“Say,” said Mr. Parker, “hasn’t something happened to this paper these last few weeks? It used not to take such an interest in things, used it?”

“You are very right,” responded Smith. “Comrade Renshaw’s methods were good in their way. I have no quarrel with Comrade Renshaw. But he did not lead public thought. He catered exclusively to children with water on the brain and men and women with solid ivory skulls. I feel that there are other and larger publics. I cannot content myself with ladling out a weekly dole of predigested mental breakfast food. I—”

“Then you, I guess,” said Mr. Parker, “are responsible for this Broster Street thing?”

“At any rate, I approve of it and put it in the paper. If any husky guy, as Comrade Maloney would put it, is anxious to aim a swift kick at the author of that article, he can aim it at me.”

“I see,” said Mr. Parker. He paused. “It said ‘Number one’ in the paper. Does that mean there are going to be more of them?”

“There is no flaw in your reasoning. There are to be several more.”

Mr. Parker looked at the door. It was closed. He bent forward.

“See here,” he said, “I’m going to talk straight, if you’ll let me.”

“Assuredly, Comrade Parker. There must be no secrets, no restraint between us. I would not have you go away and say to yourself, ‘Did I make my meaning clear? Was I too elusive?’”

Mr. Parker scratched the floor with the point of a gleaming shoe. He seemed to be searching for words.

“Say on,” urged Smith. “Have you come to point out some flaw in that article? Does it fall short in any way of your standard for such work?”

Mr. Parker came to the point.

“If I were you,” he said, “I should quit it. I shouldn’t go on with those articles.”

“Why?” enquired Smith.

“Because,” said Mr. Parker.

He looked at Smith, and smiled slowly, an ingratiating smile. Smith did not respond.

“I do not completely gather your meaning,” he said. “I fear I must ask you to hand it to me with still more breezy frankness. Do you speak from purely friendly motives? Are you advising me to discontinue the series because you fear that it will damage the literary reputation of the paper? Do you speak solely as a literary connoisseur? Or are there other reasons?”

Mr. Parker leaned forward.

“The gentleman whom I represent—”

“Then this is no matter of your own personal taste? There is another?”

“See here, I’m representing a gentleman who shall be nameless, and I’ve come on his behalf to tip you off to quit this game. These articles of yours are liable to cause him inconvenience.”

“Financial? Do you mean that he may possibly have to spend some of his spare doubloons in making Broster Street fit to live in?”

“It’s not so much the money. It’s the publicity. There are reasons why he would prefer not to have it made too public that he’s the owner of the tenements down there.”

“Well, he knows what to do. If he makes Broster Street fit for a not-too-fastidious pig to live in—”

Mr. Parker coughed. A tentative cough, suggesting that the situation was now about to enter upon a more delicate phase.

“Now, see here, sir,” he said, “I’m going to be frank. I’m going to put my cards on the table, and see if we can’t fix something up. Now, see here. We don’t want any unpleasantness. You aren’t in this business for your health, eh? You’ve got your living to make, same as everybody else, I guess. Well, this is how it stands. To a certain extent, I don’t mind owning, since we’re being frank with one another, you’ve got us—that’s to say, this gentleman I’m speaking of—in a cleft stick. Frankly, that Broster Street story of yours has attracted attention—I saw it myself in two Sunday papers—and if there’s going to be any more of them—Well, now, here’s a square proposition. How much do you want to stop those articles? That’s straight. I’ve been frank with you, and I want you to be frank with me. What’s your figure? Name it, and if you don’t want the earth I guess we needn’t quarrel.”

He looked expectantly at Smith. Smith, gazing sadly at him through his monocle, spoke quietly, with the restrained dignity of some old Roman senator dealing with the enemies of the Republic.

“Comrade Parker,” he said, “I fear that you have allowed your intercourse with this worldly city to undermine your moral sense. It is useless to dangle rich bribes before the editorial eyes. Peaceful Moments cannot be muzzled. You doubtless mean well, according to your somewhat murky lights, but we are not for sale, except at fifteen cents weekly. From the hills of Maine to the Everglades of Florida, from Portland, Oregon, to Melonsquashville, Tennessee, one sentence is in every man’s mouth. And what is that sentence? I give you three guesses. You give it up? It is this: ‘Peaceful Moments cannot be muzzled!’”

Mr. Parker rose.

“Nothing doing, then?” he said.

“Nothing.”

Mr. Parker picked up his hat.

“See here,” he said, a grating note in his voice, hitherto smooth and conciliatory, “I’ve no time to fool away talking to you. I’ve given you your chance. Those stories are going to be stopped. And if you’ve any sense in you at all, you’ll stop them yourself before you get hurt. That’s all I’ve got to say, and that goes.”

He went out, closing the door behind him with a bang that added emphasis to his words.

“All very painful and disturbing,” murmured Smith. “Comrade Brown!” he called.

Betty came in.

“Did our late visitor bite a piece out of you on his way out? He was in the mood to do something of the sort.”

“He seemed angry,” said Betty.

“He was angry,” said Smith. “Do you know what has happened, Comrade Brown? With your very first contribution to the paper you have hit the bull’s-eye. You have done the state some service. Friend Parker came as the representative of the owner of those Broster Street houses. He wanted to buy us off. We’ve got them scared, or he wouldn’t have shown his hand with such refreshing candor. Have you any engagements at present?”

“I was just going out to lunch, if you could spare me.”

“Not alone. This lunch is on the office. As editor of this journal I will entertain you, if you will allow me, to a magnificent banquet. Peaceful Moments is grateful to you. Peaceful Moments,” he added, with the contented look the Far West editor must have worn as the bullet came through the window, “is, owing to you, going some now.”